On the Run

The light blanket of crunchy white snow was turning to blackened mush in the streets. Though it wasn’t much, it shut the unprepared southern city down. The normally green, brown, and blue collisions that separated ground from sky was now an imperceptible steel grey haze. I marched up the tan carpeted stairs. My sisters stood anxiously where the ground floor met the stairs. Down the hall and past the fake smiles in the family pictures hanging on the walls was my room. An assortment of boxes were stacked, a black acoustic guitar in the corner, and an old twin mattress lay in the other corner.

You stormed down the hall, past the bathroom, and into my room. Your banshee shrieks were incomprehensible. Those of sirens were said to bring sailors to their rocks, where yours only drove them away, into the arms of imminent death in the doldrums. I lifted the mattress I’d called my own for the last ten years, carried it past you and down the steps. My sisters, like statues, frozen in place after staring into the eyes of Medusa. Out the door and into the bitter cold, I toss the mattress into the bed of my truck. With a loud thump, I head back inside.

Your frenzied, apoplectic movement hit the house like the fire you set a couple weeks ago. Walking past my sisters, you fly down the stairs. The girls scattered like bugs from under a rock that was just lifted. Your hand cut through the air. With a loud slap, my cheek burned and eyes filled with burning, toxic tears. In an instant, I grabbed you by the throat and slammed you against the wall.

“If you ever touch me, or my sisters again, I will fucking end you.”

My words were empty. I was leaving. I let you down, you stepped away choking. An indention from the back of your head leaving a soft blanket of gypsum in your hair. Up the stairs I stormed. My fists crashed through the drywall. Bloodying and busting my knuckles, I was left with a thick brown paste of blood and drywall across the tops of my hands. Burning, I took off my jacket, opened my window, and began tossing things out. My green, military surplus duffle bag full of clothes, my sheet, blanket, and pillow, and the singular family picture that was in my room. The crash of broken glass as it hit the street was music to my ears.

I grabbed the last three boxes and waddled down the stairs, jacketless, enraged, and bleeding. I dropped the dented and rusted tailgate of my black and red 1988 GMC 1500 and slid them on top of the mattress. I grabbed the duffle bag and bedding from the yard and threw them through my open driver-side window into the passenger seat. One last check, the snow and frozen grass crunches under my boots before walking through the front door. You were absent, a completely unsurprising turn of events. The girls were crying softly. Not from the fight, they were used to that.

I surveyed the house, room by room, to ensure that I wasn’t missing anything. You emerged from the depths of your room and stormed past me in the hallway, stomped down the stairs, and slammed the front door behind you. Gone. Relief washed over me, opening the iron bulwarks of my heart to the unshakable sadness and guilt. Though your physical presence was gone, you stuck with me like a specter.

My jacket on the floor was the last thing I needed, and I met the girls outside. I gave those blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauties a hug. My two sisters, the two girls I raised, the two things that kept me alive. I was leaving them behind. The sun began to break through the haze in the sky and twinkle off the snow and ice on the ground. The tears on my sisters’ faces were magnified by the blaze of the snow-reflected sunlight. I embraced both individually. My jaw clinched tightly, throat closing, the world swallowing me. What felt like an eternity and a second simultaneously passed, and I let them go. The door of my truck creaked. The beaten-up bucket seat cried. The plywood floorboard groaned. The key turned, the engine fired up, the truck rattled. Hand on the shifter, I sat and stared through the cracked windshield as the fog of the cold burned off.

“I’ve got to go.”

I jam the truck into the reverse, roll out of the driveway, and slam the shifter back into to drive. Rage Against The Machine blared through the speakers, reverberating off the houses on the snow-covered cul-de-sac. The engine roared to life as I slammed the accelerator. My eyes, locked on my rearview mirror, watched as you faded from my view. Up the hill, take a right, and head out to the main road.

The roads were empty leading up to I-95. Past the scratcher-run tattoo shops, addict and junior soldier filled strip clubs, and predatory car dealerships I fled. Cigarette smoke burned my lungs and eyes, smoking to fight back the tears. The road split at the next intersection. Left for north, right for south. Where to from here? In an instant, I slammed my turn signal down, shifted to the right lane, and got on the ramp for I-95 South. Destination? Florida.

Mile markers, processions of red taillights, green-and-white highway exit signs. The rattle of loose screws and the hum of wheels on the road filled my ears. Tears streamed from my eyes like the little Dutch boy at the dam ran out of fingers. The façade broke. I broke. Fifteen years past, I was born. Fifteen years past, you wished for me to be gone. Fifteen minutes ago, you got your wish.

Turn off the radio. Pull off the highway. Fill up the gas tank. Buy some smokes and a coffee. Nobody checks IDs at state border gas stations. Silence consumes me. Paralyzed in the driver’s seat, the white noise of my last wish plays on repeat like a skipping CD. Light another cigarette. Stare out the window.

Six years past, I met you for the first time. Fifteen years past, like a ghost, you disappeared. Eight hours from now, we’ll meet again. Two weeks from now, I’ll put you through a coffee table. Two weeks and one day from now, I’ll be on my own… again.

Ten years past, they molested me. Eight years past, he molested me. Ten years past, you didn’t believe me. Eight years past, you believed him. So, forgive me for a minute if I’m feeling mighty grim. Two weeks before, I hung myself in the bathroom. The thud of my body on the cold linoleum didn’t raise an eyebrow. The floor wrapped me in its sweet embrace and said, “It’s okay. You can try again later.” So, forgive me if I’m consumed with rage, but this is the product of the hate you gave. A childhood soundtrack of fists colliding with bone, doors slamming and locking, household goods tossed like waves in a storm, and the silence of me wishing you were gone for only an hour more, forced to be a sideshow act for your friends, we both know I was the means to an end.

Fuck it. I’ve gotta keep going. Turn the key and hear that 454 roar to life. Back on the highway, to find another way to die.